


The Downward Spiral

by Quantum_Witch, Vulgarweed



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aftercare, BDSM, Catharsis, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mention of Fallen Aziraphale, Mention of Really-Evil Crowley, Whipping, not quite what it seems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 14:33:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19336477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quantum_Witch/pseuds/Quantum_Witch, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: Sometimes an angel must truly confront his demons. And vice versa. This story is Choose Not to Warn for a reason, but all is not as it seems and it's not a truly dark fic. If you have triggers, please read the note at the end before deciding whether the story is something you want to read.Illustrations are NSFW.





	The Downward Spiral

When you have feared something for six millennia, the fear itself becomes a part of one’s being it can be nearly painful to lose. That thing most feared is almost anticlimactic when it comes.

Almost.

Such it was when the angel Aziraphale was cast out of Heaven. Like many others, he had never meant to Fall—he’d just hung around with the wrong people, if people was in fact the word. Six thousand years on earth, sampling its light and its music and its tastes and its scents, loving it too much, avoiding the call to ride out with the Host at Armageddon…

None of that was what did it. What did it was something he’d always believed to be a Virtue, though perhaps not in that specific form. For the damned are out of His presence entirely and written in Hell’s bad books (not that Hell has any other kind)--and compassion is one thing, but one must draw the line. (All right, especially not in that particular form. Really, he should have known better. Never mind that even now, that demon’s fangs were perversely fetching.)

It was all catalogued and recorded so efficiently, on his permanent record. The language was dispassionately formal. It was all just an HR report to them, after all.

 **Avarice** —As though those ephemeral bits of parchment and paper and human attempts at “wisdom” had any real meaning. Aziraphale should have known better, much as he loved them.

 **Pride** —thinking he himself might possibly have any insights to offer on ineffability. How dare he?

 **Gluttony** —well, that was apparent just to look at him, wasn’t it?

 **Envy** —How presumptuous to wish for more information from Heaven, and greater status of decision-making. To think, at times, that he ought to wield some authority instead, steeped as he was in what passed for “common sense” on the tainted Creation.

 **Sloth** —“I should get out more.” Indeed yes, and he should have started three thousand years ago.

 **Wrath** —To kill a child, Aziraphale? Really, tempting a human to try that? With knowledge he should not have had? No, don’t try to argue it was in cold blood and for a Greater Good. That only makes it worse.

That was six out of seven, and just as Himself could have been persuaded to spare Sodom but for the want of ten righteous men, it could well have stopped there. Sexlessness had been Aziraphale’s last hope, though he knew it not (for really, for all those millennia he’d lived that way, it’d only been out of Sloth, hadn’t it?). So casually the last straw his status clung to had been flung aside—and not for any innocent human, but for him, the one who had caused the Fall of all humanity.

Eve hadn’t known what she was getting into. She just wanted a tasty apple and a bit more knowledge of her world. What warning she’d been given was so sketchy. Even the Serpent himself hadn’t actually fully known better just yet. But Aziraphale had known, and he still wanted a taste of sweet red lips and a bit of the human body’s deep, longing, questing information.

For Eve only was curious about the fruit, but Aziraphale had said yes to the Serpent with knowledge aforethought.

 **Lust** —the last of the Seven, the seventh seal of his fate.

***

He knew so little. He also knew that was part of his judgment – that one who had so cherished knowledge before should now so utterly lack it.

He hadn’t a clue where he was, for example—oh, he knew, _generally,_ but it might’ve been nice to have more specifics. He knew only that he was chained to something resembling a cross, and all there really was left was pain, and fire all around him in the corners of his stinging eyes. There were many crosses in that time, as he remembered so clearly, and only one of them signified redemption and resurrection. For the thousands of others crucified, there’d only been agony and death.

For all that Crowley had gone on about Hell’s terrible taste in just about everything, Aziraphale had harboured a dreadful curiosity. Crowley’d been right—the aesthetic was appalling. Black candles? Blood on the walls? Screams for ambience, brimstone for incense?

Aziraphale wasn’t totally innocent. He’d seen a few lurid paintings on the covers of records of that particularly unpleasant form of be-bop back on Earth. Accurate, apparently. The dismembered limbs--whose?--were especially distasteful.

A whipcrack made his eyes squeeze shut.

He knew he was paying back his body’s own treachery, for he was in a terrible state of erotic arousal that would probably never be sated, for that is one more possibility of what eternity is.

He knew that he had even less hope than a human in his place, and so could not bear to try to unfurl what might be left of his wings, or to reach out along any channels he’d ever had with Above.

Aziraphale’s particular pet delusion tightened his fist in the angel’s hair as he fell upon Aziraphale’s back with yet one more brutal strike of his whip.

Crowley snarled, “And you made this choice for what? For _this?_ For _me?”_

“I had to! I had to try! I didn’t _know!”_

Crowley’s laughter was devastating. His wardrobe didn’t help either. “The ssseat of desolation, void of light…”

Aziraphale thought it wasn’t fair, that whole notion of oblivion--dangled in front of him as a threat and yet at the last denied him when he wanted it so much, when it seemed the best of his very limited possibilities. To be so broken and so wrong and unable to ever just blink out in relief. O, lost innocence, faith in the essential neutrality of Eternity.

He had to acknowledge this much now; that really and truly, against all his thousands of years of research and observation (and, it must be admitted now, _wishful thinking):_ Falling forever stripped one’s ability to care for another, and so of course no demon could ever do so, which meant not only that his alleged lover could never have cared for him (and he could almost believe it now, to hear him gloat) but also that _he_ couldn’t care for anyone anymore.

God. Damn. It.

It went on and on. Go on already, he thought. If I have to be changed . . . At the very least he would understand Crowley a little better even if Aziraphale’s new demonic nature would render forgiving him impossible.

After all, he was naked and bound and helpless. Before long, there would be a violation when Hell’s agent claimed his prize and rendered it worthless at the same time. All Aziraphale had left to wonder was if he’d have enough of a body left to sustain that assault, or if what he changed into would incite that same toxic, rapacious desire…

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to beg for mercy or not. He supposed it was expected, but he – _ow!_ —hurt too much to make the effort.

It took so long to burn his body away, and even longer for the aetheric winds to tear at his spirit. Cell by cell and nerve by nerve, the pain was exquisite.

“Yeah, squirm a little more,” snarled Crowley. “I’ve waited long enough to do this to you, and I’m going to fucking _enjoy_ it.”

As the blows fell and the flames rose around him, Aziraphale was eventually, finally, distilled down to angry, bereft atoms. He opened his mouth again to scream goodbye to everything he’d ever thought he was or wanted to be, and what came out was, “Oh, _Crowley,_ you _beast!”_  
What came out after that was . . . 

Well, he found he was made of

Soap bubbles.

Weightless and rainbow-coloured and fragile, and yet . . . 

. . . protected.

So what emerged then was not so much a scream as

A giggle.

 

Mind you, nothing had changed.

Aziraphale was still chained to something that did rather resemble a cross, in Hell (or rather, the basement of his bookshop) being abused by a demon (but not just _any_ demon).

And he couldn’t stop giggling.

“Oh, for fuck’s _sake!”_ cursed a voice in his ear.

“I’m sorry, my dear, it’s just that . . . ”

“At the very least, I mean, we had a safeword, you could’ve . . . ”

“It wasn’t that . . . I didn’t need . . . Aziraphale cast a glance over his shoulder, and what he saw was Crowley, red-faced and downcast.

“Hastur was right,” muttered Crowley morosely. “I _am_ a lousy excuse for a demon. I can’t even terrorise and torture an angel _who wants me to.”_

 _Oh. Oh my dear . . ._ thought Aziraphale, who was still contemplating shreds of his brain spattered somewhere about the cement basement’s floor amid a positive litter of feathers, most likely as imaginary as the severed limbs. But goodness, it was funny.

“Oh, you’ve done so well,” Aziraphale whispered. “Considering…”

Crowley really had – the illusion was all too real. Poor demon. Having to face the fact that he was good at it—but not good enough. Aziraphale wasn’t sure which he was taking harder, come to think of it. But Aziraphale had to come up prematurely—imagine if he’d died away to oblivion right there, and believed his loss of the Presence was real, and…

Well, truth be told, he had. Briefly. That was the whole point.

(“You’re _sure_ that’s what you want?” Crowley had said.

There’d been a lot of bluffing going on. Aziraphale had tried to pretend it was less terrifying than it was to even suggest it, much less describe it. Crowley had tried to pretend he wasn’t terrified at all. Both were trying to pretend this “negotiating a scene” business came naturally.

“Whoo-ee,” Crowley’d finally said. “You play for _keeps.”_

“Well, of course,” Aziraphale had said brightly. “No sense in halfway measures.”

If Aziraphale was going to let himself feel that ridiculous, it was going to be for a bloody good reason—that mutual nightmare had slunk around in the dark long enough. He’d considered that sudden flash of Crowley’s eyes as the concept really sank in to be something best politely ignored.)

But the wave of pure tingling joy he’d felt cradling him up from the Abyss had room for another as well. Aziraphale hadn’t just agreed to play this game, he’d begged for it and insisted on it and, in fact, designed its terms and all but written its script, and he knew full well that Crowley, sneer frozen on his face and riding crop in his hand, was waiting for his word, and that wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

Aziraphale was so giddy he felt a most uncharacteristic desire to speak freely from the heart, and what came out was, “Make love to me, you silly goo—er, I mean, Sir.”

Crowley blew out the melodramatic air of exasperation, studying the angel, naked and chained and whiplashed, slim red marks lining his pale skin.

“You have _no_ tact,” he muttered.

“Well, take it out of my hide, then,” Aziraphale said reasonably.

“You don’t have much hide left either,” Crowley sighed.

“I did rather ruin the mood, didn’t I? I do apologise.”

Aziraphale felt a puff of warm breath on the back of his neck, then on the middle of his back as he realised Crowley had doubled up laughing himself.

“Really . . . ” the demon blurted helplessly . . . ”just as well . . . don’t know how much longer I could’ve . . . I mean, those _lines_ . . . ”

“Bit of Dante in there, I recognised. I think a bit of LaHaye as well.”

“Pretty heavy on the Milton—ahahah!--honestly. Well, I couldn’t make it . . . bwahah . . . _too_ realistic . . . just wanted to scare you _some_ . . . ”

“You scared me a _lot,”_ Aziraphale admitted. Illusions and conjurations were one thing, but to give someone permission to muck about with your mind was quite another.

“Did I really?” Crowley said quickly. “That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, you said you wanted me to . . . ”

“Of course it’s all right,” Aziraphale said. Apparently this mental phenomenon, this “sub space” thing, had dimensions and depths he had only guessed at. And he was still unduly pleased that Crowley had “dressed” for the occasion—oh, no maggots, that would be counterproductive, but he did still have claws and fangs and scales in strange places.

(“Really give it some thought, now,” Aziraphale had said. “If you said you’d never worried about it, I know you’d be lying.”

“Yes. Well,” Crowley had choked. “Lying is kind of . . . what I _do._ Demon, y’know.”

“I know,” Aziraphale’d said. “And seeing through it is what _I_ do.”

“Right. Angel,” Crowley had said, with the distinct air of someone desperate to buy time while he searched his being for the last shards of long-gone cool. “Bloody _kinky_ angel.”

“At any rate,” the angel had sighed, exasperated. “You have to understand, it’s probably all in our heads. I mean. Er. Modern psychology, free-floating anxiety and all…”

“And where did you hear about that?”

“Well, your Doctor Freud had a lot to say about snakes, but . . . ”

“That’s your idea of modern psychology?”

“Hear me out. That . . . terrible thing . . . I don’t really think it’s going to happen. Because of you . . . and I . . . you know…”

“Shagging each other senseless on a regular basis?”

“It’s not as if… . . . He . . . doesn’t _know,_ right?”

“I’d prefer not to grill Him on the subject.”

Aziraphale had rolled his eyes. “But I’m still afraid. And it gets in the way, you know it does.” He held up his hands in frustration. Crowley wasn’t supposed to be making this so much more difficult with his snide little . . . 

Aziraphale let his eyes do the talking, bright with a painful clarity peering through the fog of his human affability, full of the horror of eternity.

_Tell me you don’t think about it. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t think about it._

And there was something ancient in Crowley that responded. _I’d never say that._

_I want to . . . enjoy your company . . . without fear._

_I don’t think you can. I think about the ways I want to have you, and what could happen . . . I don’t want that to happen. You’ve never pissed me off so much that I wanted that to happen to you._

_I should try harder._

_It would take a lot._

_So where’s the demon in you then?_

_Messing about with highways and phone networks and the internet. Never really wanted to hurt anyone, least of all . . . er . . ._

_Never? Never ever?_

_That’s not fair._

_No, but it’s honest. I’ll tell you something else honest. I’m terrified all the time. But not of you. I wonder if you have it in you to make me afraid of you._

_I don’t know. You’re tougher than you look._

_Even if I wanted you to?_

_Sometimes I think you’re just barking mad, did you know that?_

_Of course I am. I’m in love._

_…_

_yes?_

_You know I’ll do_ almost _anything for you._

And so Aziraphale had, with bonechillingly astute instincts, placed one manicured finger right on the event horizon of Crowley’s “almost”; the point where his demonic nature could be coaxed out to be itself, realise it was being lured to do so in the service of love, and shriek “yipe!”—but too late, it had already glimpsed the fateful paradox.

There is only one way to banish fear, and hiding isn’t involved.)

Aziraphale had heard talk long ago of corsets and codpieces and the sexiness of emphasising differences, that had made vague sense in the small part of his mind that could theoretically see the appeal of heterosexuality. (He thought he had a very good vantage point on it, seeing it from such a great distance.)

And he was even more awed at the utterly ludicrous lengths that both of them would go to . . . Oh yes, that was his role, right? With the contrite demeanor of an actor who has just realised he is still on stage, he suppressed another burgeoning outbreak of hilarity enough to say softly, “I just want to please you.”

“Au contraire, most dubious angel,” Crowley chuckled, interrupting himself for just a bit. Aziraphale felt the demon’s tonguetip lightly tracing the line of one swelling red mark across his shoulderblade, both soothing and agitating, “I do believe all this was largely to please _you.”_

“I’m not sure that’s the right choice of words exactly—“

Crowley’s hands slid slowly down the soft and unmarred skin at Aziraphale’s sides, “…and if you’d be so good as to let me finish the job…”

Aziraphale closed his eyes as the demon lightly ground his tight and overstrained trousers (black leather, in fact; for all his talk of innovations Crowley could be quite the traditionalist where it counted) against his lacerated rear, feeling every little rise of button and fly scrape him, and underneath it, Crowley’s promising heat . . . 

Aziraphale whimpered once and sank his head down again.

“That’s more like it,” Crowley said approvingly. When he reached up one hand to tug the clamp on a nipple, Aziraphale whimpered louder, and Crowley said, “that’s even more like it.”

All Aziraphale wanted to think about now were the ways in which it was true he was owned, given up and trembling . . . 

Really, as blasphemies went, it was fairly well-done. Aziraphale had certainly seen far, far less competent morality plays and flagellation performances back in the plague days, and he hoped Crowley wasn’t feeling too terribly inadequate. He did have a wicked way with a whip, after all, probably wouldn’t have done too poorly tormenting at least the minor sinners. Except that he’d’ve probably had the same old problem, the reason he was always getting dinged on Hell’s performance reviews: lack of motivation.

Aziraphale thought that perhaps only a rather intense sort of personal relationship could bring out that latent talent in him, and to his credit, felt only a little smug about it.

Crowley’s hands snaked up his arms and unbuckled his chains, and Aziraphale gasped and fell back into Crowley’s embrace, caught easily and held safely. He thought a maidenly swoon might be well-placed here.

“Now,” Crowley said, with a hint of a snicker and another of command, “how about you get on your knees, and then _I’ll_ say my prayers,”

Whoever wrote that the serpent was more subtle than the other beasts of the field had clearly never been on the business end of any of Crowley’s “seductive” lines.

But his style was familiar by now, as was the way he pushed Aziraphale forward while still holding him tight, hands having their various ways with him all over. Aziraphale made a slightly painful sound when Crowley reached around him and touched . . . 

“You want this off, don’t you?” Crowley gloated.

Aziraphale could only nod.

“I could make you beg for that. If you can’t even say what it is, you shouldn’t be allowed to wear one.” But his natural impatience won out, and the cock ring disappeared and what Crowley’s hand was doing in its place was nearly as tormenting.

Aziraphale started to speak.

“No words,” Crowley growled. “I think you’ve said quite enough already. But I’m feeling generous so—“ featherlight fingertips over sharply craving skin – “you can make noise if you want to.”

And Aziraphale did, rather helplessly, increasing in their pleading urgency as he felt Crowley’s slickened cock teasing him behind, threatening a sweet violence and then deliciously delivering.

Aziraphale always savoured that moment of first entry, the caution and the stretching, the resistance and acceptance and then the way his body attuned to Crowley’s and their pulses synchronised and then he was firmly, sometimes roughly filled . . .  
His moan sounded suspiciously like a word, one that might have been “yes” or might have been “yours.” Crowley chose not to hear that breach of his orders, only to grasp Aziraphale’s cock with one hand and tug his hair with the other and _move._

If he’d done this before, before Aziraphale’s terror had popped like one of those bubbles—which they’d agreed to, after all, he wondered if he could have…

Never mind. Oh never mind. Oh yes, oh like – Aziraphale just let the sounds come out, expressing his (fading) pain and (rising) pleasure to the one who’d created them.

And to the One who’d created _them._ (And if He hadn’t created them to do this, then why bother?)

It would have been all right. Aziraphale struggled to move against Crowley as one arm held him fiercely tight and the other kept threatening to touch his erection again any second now…but all his attention was focused truly on that wet, panting mouth against his back, hair trailing sweat across his wounds. It ought to sting like the dickens, but Crowley was healing him with every kiss and lick, the conflicting tingles of knitting skin and dancing energy making Aziraphale shiver and struggle a little.

Crowley sighed and drew himself up again, pulling Aziraphale hard against him and thrusting deep as his wings emerged and curled and held the angel as immobile as a spider’s cocooning of a fly.

Aziraphale was going to protest this until the expertly rough touch took full and final control of him, and he came instead—shatteringly hard, and all over Crowley’s feathers. What started as a laugh on Crowley’s part turned into a choked cry, a swelling and twitching deep inside Aziraphale, a clenching of his arms that made Aziraphale’s head fall limply back against the demon’s shoulder.

That was a different interpretation of Eternity altogether, the time they spent locked together half-conscious and recovering, and fearful of separating because of how stickily sweat seemed to have fused their skins.

Finally, with a wince, Crowley pulled back, letting Aziraphale slump further against him.

“May I, er, talk now?”

“If you must,” Crowley sighed wanly. “If you _can.”_

“I . . . still want to know . . . whose entrails those were.”

“Look again,” Crowley chuckled. On the wall were the cables of the old modem Aziraphale’d destroyed when Crowley had started Googling himself just a little too hard.

“Mm,” Aziraphale said—half laughing, half sighing, wondering if he ought to suggest going to bed. A bit of Sloth would certainly not go amiss.

“Been down here long enough?” Crowley said.

“One probably doesn’t hear that often…down there.”

Crowley laughed. (He knew that one did, of course, in much the same way people on earth will say, “Hot enough for you?” during life-threatening heat waves.) One more expenditure of energy, and there—Aziraphale, back in that gauzy white angel robe he’d worn before it was so theatrically shredded, and Crowley in something rather more comfortable than he’d had on before. (Pyjama bottoms, basic black, nothing he thought of as pretentious at least). And with one slightly rickety flicker of molecular manipulation, he’d almost gracefully managed to pick up Aziraphale, and proceeded to carry him up the stairs as any man-shaped being might do with a rather pudgy and punch-drunk bride.

_Some beings just don’t know when to stop,_ Aziraphale thought woozily. But it was hardly unpleasant.

“Now,” the demon was muttering, “if I could keep you in my cruel infernal thrall just a little bit longer, I’d be half tempted to command you to give me a bit of a backrub, after all, I really did overexert my poor shoulder for you, and…”

Aziraphale grunted something, hoping he sounded as exhausted as he felt. But when they did finally land on the bed, what they mostly did was kiss, and Aziraphale worked loose the most obvious knot just above Crowley’s left shoulderblade, only slightly grudgingly.

There were no sealed pockets of fear left anymore.

“Crowley, stop _giggling!”_

“I can’t, I mean, _Paradise Lost_ as done by Hammer Horror Studios and Mills & Boon.”

“Sometimes, your figures of speech are utterly lost on me,” Aziraphale murmured into Crowley’s collarbone.

Blessed demon was actually laughing in his _sleep._ Made it rather difficult to hold him comfortably, but Aziraphale persevered. And all around them the bed was soft and cool like a cloud.

 

CODA:

**Author's Note:**

> The apparent torture/rape scene at the beginning, and the tragedy of Fallen Aziraphale, is a negotiated consensual roleplay. BDSM as therapy can be ill-advised but they're making it work for them.


End file.
